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Electronic literature

I´m at the ELMCIP conference in Bergen. The concept of Electronic Literature (EL) as different from ebooks is of great interest to me. Today EL is published outside the traditional channels of publishing and by many who are not concidering themselves authors in the traditional sense. I have seen some articles discussing Augmented Literature, i.e. texts that have added content in the form of video, sound and animation. The iPad iBook version of Winnie the Poo is probably a good example of this. EL takes this a step further and plays with the text itself as well as adding content in other formats than text. One example is the Jean-Pierre Balpes experiment Automatic text generation. EL is literature that cannot exist in any other format than digital. Hypertext is the best known example of this. Texts that exist as linked passages where the navigation is an integral part of the reading experience.

The conference looks at both practical work in buliding an europeand database of electronic literature, but also has an academic dimension discussing EL-critisism, the development of EL as an literary field and the communities that are emerging around EL. EL has a performance component as well as the traditional viewing on screen way of reading. The concept of reading is itself under pressure from the development of this genre (if it is a genre).